When the trio started making the film, it wasn't clear if The English Patient star's nagging Crystal would live or die at the end of the movie. Cassavetes was open to ideas and when Gosling suggested a sick death, the director added it to the script.

The actor recalls, "Nick said, 'I think she should die. What do you want to do? When you see your dead ma, do you want to cry, laugh? What do you want to do?'

"As kind of a joke, I said, 'Why don't I cut her open and look at her womb?' and he was like, 'Cool, is that what you want to do? Ok we'll do that!' Then he called the effects guy and they got a pig's stomach from the butcher and that's what we did."

Scott Thomas admits she was a little taken aback by her character's gruesome end: "We changed so much. I mean I got to Bangkok and suddenly I was gonna die in the end! We didn't really have a satisfactory exit for Crystal and I was totally unprepared for that.

"Some people have interpreted that as reclaiming your identity and other people have seen it as sexual and you keep going on about penetrating your mother!"